Monday, March 16, 2015

On the Coast - Unalakleet

The first town the mushers get to on the coast is Unalakleet. It is accessable only by boat, sled or air but has 2 restaurants and 2 grocery stores nonetheless. One of our Iknitarod moderators lives there so we get great reporting from the coast (Shown above at sunset)

She's been keeping us up to date on the weather. There were 35 mph winds yesterday. I don't want to know what that meant in minus whatever wind chill. They've been getting ready for days for the onslaught of reporters, officials and mushers coming in and through. There's a prize for getting to the coast first and Aaron Burmeister won it. Actually he's won several prizes along the way already.

Aaron's team

Special berms of snow have been made to protect the dogs from the relentless wind.

This is a big checkpoint for dropping dogs and picking up a fresh sled. Not all mushers can afford to ship a sled, but the veterans usually have enough sponsorhip to afford it. All mushers have bags of food and supplies that they leave in Anchorage before the race which are shipped to most of the checkpoints by plane.

Windy

scrap wood for heating water for the teams

Not the bright pink label for DeeDee's sled

Drop bags for Jodi Bailey and Rohn Buser

Aliy Zirkle, Jef King, Dallas Seavery and Mitch Seavey have already been through this checkpoint. Some stayed to rest for a bit, others just to snack their dogs and off they go over the Blueberry Hills to Shaktoolik.

I'm working on the body of the sweater and the sleeves at the same time.

A zillion stitches around per round it seems. Even though I am decreasing 8 sts every other round, that doesn't seem to register much yet. Plus I'm using my largest cable, 60", which is not near the circumference of this sweater if the chest is 49 and each sleeve is 18. So I have to shove stitches around every 20 or so knit. Slog slog slog for 10 more rounds. Then I get to cast off a bunch for the neck band and work back and forth. That doesn't thrill me either but I'm going to learn Brazilian Protugese purling on Wednesday night and the new skill will make my purling easier and faster. I might even grow to like it which is the object of the lesson Rosanne will be giving us at Knit Knite.